Big Walk Review

You owe it to yourself and your friends to experience Big Walk. It is appointment gaming at its finest.

Big Walk is one of those games that’s both easily explained and difficult to convey. If you wanted to be purely descriptive, it is a multiplayer adventure game where you and two to twelve friends explore an abstracted island full of puzzles and secrets. Think of it as a cooperative-focused Myst or The Witness. However, describing Big Walk like this, or using the much-maligned term “friendslop,” is a disservice to Big Walk. Yes, the core functions and mechanics are walking around and solving puzzles, but the threads that connect you and your friends together are what make it special. You are not just solving a puzzle; you are collaborating with others to find the best method. You aren’t just walking around an environment; you are discussing pathways, stop points, and scouting ahead to find the right way to go. It’s those little moments between the walking and the solving that make Big Walk so much more than just friendslop.

Big Walk is all about teamwork and communicating

Big Walk doesn’t really have a premise. There is no story, no underlying lore, and there isn’t really any sort of narrative at all. You and your friends are weird little abstracted bird creatures made of different-sized balls, all shaded with customizable colours. You are dropped onto a small island filled with brightly coloured puzzle structures, as well as a few bits of infrastructure like a chairlift, monorail, and radio towers. While initially there’s no clear objective, you’ll eventually be led to parts of the world that take these small, rounded-shaped objects that you get for completing every puzzle room. Once you get a bearing of the island, you quickly conclude where you need to get to. That’s the beauty of the way Big Walk is structured. It doesn’t tell you anything; it shows you. It doesn’t tell you that you need to go here to find the way to unlock the monorail; it shows you interesting structures in the distance, and your own curiosity will take you there. It is not structureless. There is a progression you need to go through to get to the end of the game, but it hides it so well that you won’t even notice until you’re nearly finished. If you like waypoints and objective markers, this is not the game for you.

Some of the puzzle rooms can be daunting

The puzzles themselves are what you and your friends are there for. They are extremely varied in both concept and difficulty, most of which require at least another person to help you solve them. Practically all of the puzzles require some sort of communication to complete, whether it’s telling a friend what symbols to slot in what order on a wall or helping guide a player from a vantage point. However, as you progress through the game, the puzzles not only become more complicated, but they also become more limiting in what you can do. That symbol-matching example I just gave, what if you did a similar puzzle but were separated by soundproof glass or by a great distance? This is where Big Walk truly shines. Once everyone starts to get comfortable with both how the game works and the group you are playing with, that is when the magic happens. During one play session, myself and two other friends got separated for a bit, and once we reconnected with the larger group, they had managed to not only find a puzzle but also develop their own communication system to solve it using only a single lightbulb. It was truly a sight to see something develop like that while we were off on our own little adventure. With that said, one criticism I do have is that, due to the openness of the island and lack of guardrails, the difficulty of the puzzles can be wildly different. That same group managed to get into an area that was clearly of a higher difficulty than what we had seen before. Be aware that you could end up in a situation where you find the hardest versions of puzzles first, making the less difficult ones somewhat boring.

It is one of the best representations of the Australian wilderness, minus the bright coloured puzzle rooms

One of the smarter things the team at House House implemented is the way the characters communicate, both physically and verbally. Each arm is controlled independently, allowing what on the surface appear to be simple characters to become incredibly expressive. If you need to get someone’s attention, you can wave your arms above your head or jump up and down. You can raise items above your head to be more visible to other players. Vocal communication is also expertly implemented. The game features a strict proximity chat that is core to the gameplay of Big Walk, so much so that the very first thing you see when booting the game is the microphone testing page alongside a note asking players to avoid standard voice chat and face-to-face communication. The voice chat can be enhanced with items found in the world, like walkie-talkies and megaphones, so communication won’t completely break down if your groups decide to split up. The game even features text chat that works with those items, which is a nice touch.

Share a quiet moment with a friend

The real star of the show in Big Walk is its wonderful environment. Taking cues from Australian bushlands, the game features an excellent representation of what it looks and, most importantly, sounds like to walk in the Australian bush. Each tree, plant, and rock has an air of authenticity to it, like it was taken directly from a Victorian national park. This contrasts wonderfully with the puzzle rooms and infrastructure, which all have this coloured, almost child’s-playground kind of aesthetic to them. Not only are these structures incredibly pleasing to look at, but they also contrast well with the more natural-looking environment, making it much easier to spot these crucial parts of the game during your travels, whether it’s through dense Australian bush, on top of towers, or even in the pitch-black dark of night. However, if I had to put one strike against Big Walk, it would be the collision detection with the environment. It is incredibly easy to get stuck on even the smallest thing in Big Walk, and it often leads to frustration. If you are walking uphill and walk into a small rock, you will be stuck. If you walk over the monorail tracks, you will be stuck. Anything that you feel you can walk or jump over is often not the case. This was my number one frustration, and considering this game often intentionally creates communication issues, that is saying something.

The way the game limits you is what makes it engaging

I have to give special mention to the sound work in this game, which is absolutely outstanding. As someone who has lived in Australia my entire life, I can tell you they absolutely nailed the soundscape of the Australian bushlands. From the crunching noise of leaves under your feet to the wind flowing through the trees to the mocking laugh of kookaburras in the distance, all of it is immersive and immaculate. My favourite is the squeaking noise your feet make when walking on the soft sand of an Australian beach. It made me so happy hearing that specific sound in a video game. The soundtrack is also a delight featuring some wonderful acapella, electro-dance and calming ambiance through the world to discover.

Despite their simplistic design, the character models are quite expressive

I understand Big Walk might be frustrating for some who either don’t have friends that like these kinds of games or who, for whatever reason, are unable to organise a group together. To those people I say this: make them. Big Walk is an absolute triumph of cooperative video game design. Any sort of person who doesn’t like these types of games will be won over. I played Big Walk with two different groups: one was a larger group of about five to seven people who had been excited to play this for months, and the other was a single person whom I had to buy the game for and convince to play. And you know what? That holdout was the one who loved it the most and now wants to 100% complete it. I promise you, if you can do whatever it takes to wrangle some friends together, it will be worth it. Drag them to the computer if you have to.